New Delhi, March 25
Reliance Industries will shut down nearly two-third of its 1,400 petrol pumps in next couple of weeks as it is unable to match the fuel price offered by state-run retailers, who get compensated by the government for selling fuel below the cost.

Reliance will close about 900 company operated petrol pumps and has sent Internal mails for a phased closure, industry sources said. The company plans not to replenish petrol and diesel stocks once the existing lot at its retail outlets get exhausted.

The owner of nation’s largest refinery suffered huge losses despite selling petrol and diesel at prices higher than the state-run retailers Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum. On an average, petrol from Reliance outlets costed between Rs 4 and 5 a litre more than the PSU pumps.

Reliance still lost Rs 3.4 a litre on petrol and Rs 5.8 per litre on diesel and had seen its market share fall from 14.3 per cent to less than a per cent in diesel.

Public sector retailers, too, lose Rs 10.93 on sale of every litre of petrol and Rs 14.66 per litre on diesel but the losses are made up by issue of oil bonds by the Government and discounts from ONGC, GAIL and Oil India. The same compensation is not given to the private retailers like Reliance and Essar.

Reliance spokesperson was not immediately available for comments.

The company, sources said, had invested about Rs 4,000 crore in setting up close to 1,400 retail outlets for selling petrol and diesel in the country. Out of these, Reliance owns and operate about 900 outlets. The remaining 500 dealer operated pumps would continue to operate.

Essar Oil which has set up 1,100 petrol stations in the country is not closing shop as yet, so is Shell which operates a handful of outlets in the southern India.

In Reliance’s retail chain, transporters had invested over Rs 524 crore in a transport fleet of nearly 3,745 trucks, who after the closure would idle.

Over 55,000 jobs, which had been created by Reliance retail operations at outlets, transporters and within the company are now at risk.

Sources said the shift of huge volumes from Reliance outlets to PSU outlets would increase the burden of support on the government to the tune of nearly Rs 4,000 crore. — PTI 

New Delhi, March 25
Tata Chemicals today said it would raise $850 million to part-fund its $1 billion acquisition of US-based soda ash maker General Chemicals Industries Products.

The company also said it was embarking on an expansion programme in its African operations with plans to venture into the bio-fuel segment and explore plantation opportunities in the continent.

Tata Chemicals managing director Homi Khusrokhan said the company was raising $850 million through debt to part-fund its acquisition in the US.

“We are awaiting regulatory approval, which is expected in another couple of days, after which we will formally announce the details regarding the finances,” he said.

Earlier in January, the company had announced the acquisition of US-based soda ash maker General Chemicals Industries Products for $1 billion.

On the bio-fuel plans in Africa, he said: "Africa is a very good option for us to invest in the plantation sector and we can also have the advantage of setting up plantations in large areas.”

He said the company is also waiting for environment regulatory approval for manufacturing natural soda ash in Tanzania. — PTI

Chandigarh, March 25
Technology will soon come to the aid of lakhs of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) consumers in Punjab and Chandigarh, who have been reeling under a severe LPG shortage.

The ministry of petroleum has now decided to make a centralised system for booking cooking gas. This will ensure that the supplies are controlled and bring accountability in functioning of the LPG dealers. The new system will first be run on pilot basis in Punjab and Chandigarh, and following its success, will be emulated in the rest of the country.

Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), which had originally suggested that a technology- backed centralised booking system be introduced, will begin the service in Mohali and Chandigarh. H. S Bedi, general manager, IOC, said the centralised booking for LPG would work with the convergence of three technologies. “Consumers can make their LPG bookings through the Internet, short message service (SMS) or through an interactive voice response system (IVRS). The bookings will be sorted out for each dealer and then forwarded to them, who will then deliver the LPG cylinders,” he said.

A customised website has already been created for dealing with the e-bookings, while the facility of making bookings by sending SMS and IVRS already exists. The consumers would also get a response through a e-mail or SMS, confirming the booking and likely date of delivery.

Officials said Punjab food and civil supplies minister Adesh Pratap Kairon has already given a go ahead for starting the service in Punjab. It will be launched next month.

Bedi said with the centralised booking system coming into place, dealer’s load in terms of additional telephone lines and operators for making the LPG bookings would also be reduced.

Chandigarh, March 25
High cost of land in Punjab is keeping not just Indian MNCs, but also foreign investors away from making investment here. With land being a scarcity and over 85 per cent of it being used for agriculture, land prices have shot through the roof.

The recent incidents of agitation by farmers in Barnala over the compensation granted for land acquired by Trident Industries; and the compensation of Rs 1.50 crore per acre to farmers whose land is being acquired in Mohali for international airport may have got the government accolades from the landed community. But it has certainly caught the attention of the industrial investors, who are now thinking of looking elsewhere.

In fact, senior minister from the Republic of Singapore Goh Chang Tok, who was in town today leading an industry delegation to study the business prospects here, minced no words when he said the high cost of land was a primary factor why Singapore companies in the manufacturing sector do not see Punjab as an investment destination. “We would rather have Punjab for investment in knowledge-based companies,” he said.

When Dr A S Bindra, managing director, Punjab Meats Limited, prodded him to encourage food processing units by Singapore, the minister said it would be economically viable to export processed food to Punjab, than buying land and setting up a plant.

It is because of the high cost of land that Punjab had lost out on the Volkswagen deal and the Tata small car deal.

These astronomically high land prices have also ensured that large and medium enterprises in the state are now making their expansion in other states like Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, where the land prices are reasonable and power scarcity is not an issue.

With tax concessions being granted in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, industry from Punjab has also been shifting. As a result, the central excise collections from Punjab have gone down from Rs 2,786 crore in 2003-04 to Rs 867 crore in 2006-07. 

New Delhi, March 25
Arguing that domestic steel prices are the lowest in the world, the Indian steel industry today made it clear that any move to appoint a regulator will dampen the zeal of potential investors, especially when the stock market is witnessing see-sawing fortunes.

“Indian steel prices are ruling at $ 800 a tonne, perhaps the lowest in the world, while international prices are over $ 1000. Any talk of regulating prices will tantamount to putting steel makers between the two prongs of a pincer,” Indian Steel Alliance (ISA) president Moosa Raza told PTI.

ISA, which is the apex body of domestic steel utilities, is campaigning against setting up a regulator, withdrawing of import duty and imposition of export duty as suggested by Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as measures to contain the rising steel prices.

A regulator can at best regulate prices only at the producer level but how would it address those thousands of intermediaries who would be beyond its purview, Raza asked and pointed out that regulating price would only benefit them and encourage corruption among the inspecting agencies.

“Many investors are acquiring land and machinery and are signing MoUs with the states for setting up their steel plants. Any wrong signal at this stage, especially when the stock market is tumbling daily, will dampen the zeal of the investors and hamper the growth of the steel industry,” he said.

Arguing that recent spate of price rise in steel sector is primarily due to soaring input costs, Raza pointed out that unrestrained export of iron ore was of grave concern to the industry and that appeals to impose fiscal measures to contain the same have gone unheeded. The ISA president said miners have increased prices of iron ore from $ 70 per tonne in April 2007, to $150 this month.

“This is a whopping 114 per cent increase in the last year alone. Even the state-run NMDC raised contract prices by 50 per cent in the middle of last year, while scrap prices went up to $ 500 a tonne,” Raza said. — PTI

New Delhi, March 25
The Sixth Pay Commission may have recommended an average 40 per cent hike in the salaries of government employees, but the effective increase will be much less at 28 per cent on account of merger of 50 per cent DA in basic pay way back in 2004.

After submitting the report, the commission chairman justice B N Srikrishna had said the average increase in salaries would work out to be 40 per cent over the Fifth Pay Commission award. The government had merged 50 per cent of the Dearness Allowance (DA) with the basic pay with effect from January 1, 2004.

The commission has stated that most states will be able to implement the pay panel’s recommendations.

Higher tax revenues in the coming years and strong financials will help most of the state governments meet the enhanced pay bill as and when they implement the commission recommendations, the panel has said. The states’ revenues in the coming years are likely to be buoyant especially in the backdrop of upwards trend in the tax revenues of the centre and consequent devolution to states. It is observed that most of the states would be in a position to meet the additional expenditure, the panel’s report said.

Besides this the bank says that most states have been fiscally prudent and are able to manage their expenditures in keeping with the Fiscal Responsibility Budgetary Management target. In addition to this there is going to be revenue buoyancy with the introduction of Value Added Tax, the report said. 

New York, March 25
Indra Nooyi, the India-born chief executive of PepsiCo, received $14.74 million in compensation in 2007, her first full year as head of the world’s second-largest soft drink maker.

Her 2007 compensation value more than doubled the $6.3 million she was paid in 2006, when she served as Pepsi’s chief financial officer. According to the company’s annual regulatory filing yesterday, Nooyi’s package makes her the highest paid executive in the company.

Her package includes $1.3 million in salary, $3.2 million of non-equity incentive plan compensation, and nearly $400,000 in compensations .By contrast, Pepsi’s rival Coca-Cola gave its chief executive, Neville Isdell, $21.65 million in compensation in 2007, a 3.6 percent increase from the previous year. — IANS